More precisely, I wrote: "It was Columbus and his son Ferdinand who began killing Natives savagely, not the other way around." I don't know if they personally killed anyone, but their men did, at their behest. The person in charge is ultimately responsible for the deaths he ordered or allowed to happen on his watch.

Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

>> If there is no support, then the statement is propaganda. <<

There's support.

Rob Schmidt
Publisher
PEACE PARTY

*****

The debate continues (10/1/03)....
Some background on Columbus and Las Casas for you:

Although his petition was refused by the Crown, in February, 1495 Columbus took 1600 Arawak as slaves. 550 slaves were shipped back to Spain; two hundred died en route, probably of disease, and of the remainder half were ill when they arrived. After legal proceedings, the survivors were released and ordered to be shipped back home. Some of the 1600 were kept as slaves for Columbus's men.

The main objective of Columbus' journey had been gold. To further this goal, he imposed a system on the natives in Cicao on Haiti, whereby all those above fourteen years of age had to find a certain quota of gold, which would be signified by a token placed around their necks. Those who failed to reach their quota would have their hands chopped off.

In 1498, Columbus left for the New World a third time, accompanied by the young Bartolome de Las Casas, who would later provide partial transcripts of Columbus's logs.

As the following posting shows, Las Casas didn't just interview people, he witnessed Spanish crimes himself. From Media Beat:

Journalism should provide facts and help us to uncover truths. Yet, when it comes to Christopher Columbus, many reporters and pundits hold on dearly to myths. Meanwhile, historians who deal in documentation are often denigrated as "politically correct" revisionists.

Columbus embarked on a frenzied hunt for imaginary gold fields, using Indian captives "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first island which I found, I took some natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

In 1495, Indians were shipped to Spain as slaves, many dying en route. "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity," Columbus later wrote, "go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But far more Indians were enslaved in their homelands to harvest gold from bits of dust found in streams. Columbus' men ordered everyone over age 13 in a province of Haiti to bring in a quota of gold; Indians who failed had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death.

The war against the native population included hangings and burnings. Mass suicides followed. Historians estimate that half of the Indians on Haiti — as many as 125,000 people — were dead within a few years. Virtually all were dead within two generations.

The most important document of the era is the multivolume "History of the Indies" by Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest involved in the conquest of Cuba. After owning a plantation with Indian slaves, Las Casas had a change of heart and began recording what he'd witnessed.

Las Casas witnessed Spaniards — driven by "insatiable greed" — "killing, terrorizing, afflicting, and torturing the native peoples" with "the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty." The systematic violence was aimed at preventing "Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings."

The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades," wrote Las Casas. "My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write."

Sorry, friend, your revision of revisionist history won't cut it. Las Casas was an eyewitness to Columbus's crimes. From the Denver Post:

Read Las Casas's own words: "One time, I saw four or five important native nobles roasted and broiled upon makeshift grills. They cried out pitifully. This thing troubled our Captain (Columbus) that he could not sleep. He commanded that they be strangled."

So Columbus had Native nobles strangled because their roasting was taking too long. This is the man we're supposed to celebrate?

*****

More from Zinn
Again note that Las Casas is a primary source for our knowledge of Columbus's voyages. Chapter 1 of A People's History continues:

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source—and, on many matters the only source—of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolomé de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. Las Casas transcribed Columbus's journal and, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies. In it, he describes the Indians. They are agile, he says, and can swim long distances, especially the women. They are not completely peaceful, because they do battle from time to time with other tribes, but their casualties seem small, and they fight when they are individually moved to do so because of some grievance, not on the Orders of captains or kings.

Women in Indian society were treated so well as to startle the Spaniards. Las Casas describes sex relations:

"Marriage laws are non-existent: men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger. They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth. If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a man's head or at his hands."

The Indians, Las Casas says, have no religion, at least no temples. They live in

"large communal bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time . . . made of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves. . . . They prize bird feathers of various colors, beads made of fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but they put no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality. . . ."

In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. . . . But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and, destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then. . . . The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. . . ."

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."

The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports, "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help." He describes their work in the mines:

". . . mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move Stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside. . . ."

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.

While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

"Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation. . . . In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile . . . was depopulated. . . . My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. . . ."

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it. . . ."

'Nuff said about the killing ways of Columbus and his followers. Any questions?

The debate continues (6/22/07)....
After a long hiatus I returned to answer more of this correspendent's questions.

>> On the other hand, there is conflicting testimony concerning Columbus, and in our era it is popular to maintain a "modern holiness" by means of assailing and slandering people of the past. Your views fit right into the popular PC view of Columbus. I guess I am just not PC, I prefer truth. <<

What I've written about Columbus is the truth, as far as we know. What you seem to prefer is old-fashioned, Eurocentric hero worship.

>> Secondary sources may be all we have, and may be reliable, but as noted, in the case of Columbus, the secondary sources (the priest) differs with the primary source, Columbus. <<

Bartolome de las Casas accompanied Columbus on his third voyage and settled in Hispanola thereafter. He was an eyewitness to the events he documented, so his report is a primary source.

In contrast, I don't think we have any of Columbus's original journals. What we have are edited versions produced by his son, Ferdinand Columbus, and Las Casas again.

Columbus's account of his first voyage was first published as a summary in Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father. Its Italian translation was published in 1571 by Alfonso Ulloa as Historie de S. D. Fernando Colombo nelle quali s'ha particolare e vera relazione della vita e de' fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo suo Padre…. Martin Fernandez de Navarrette found and published a longer version in 1825.

While it is stated that he wrote a history of the West Indies, there are now extant only two works by him: "Descripción y cosmografía de España", a detailedgeographical itinerary begun in 1517, published at Madrid in the "Boletin de la Real Sociedad geográfica" (1906-07); and the life of the admiral, his father, written about 1534, the Spanish original of which has been lost. It was published in an Italian translation by Ulloa in 1571 as "Vita dell' ammiraglio", and re-translated into Spanish by Barcia. "Historiadores primitivos de Indias" (Madrid, 1749). As might be expected this biography is sometimes partial, though Fernando often sides with the Spanish monarchs against his father.

Ironically, therefore, you have it exactly backward. I've relied on primary sources in reporting Columbus's transgressions. You're relying on a secondary source: the journals edited by Ferdinand Columbus to make his father look good.

>> In reference to Saddam and the WMD, the UN, the whitehouse, and even Saddam himself agree, he possessed or was developing such weapons. I don't know anyone without a political agenda that thinks otherwise. <<

Four years later, that's probably the biggest laugh in your message.

>> Simply put your alleged historians (Zinn for instance) have known bias, and they write from that bias. <<

Zinn quoted from his sources extensively. His editorial views don't change the eyewitness accounts from true to false.

>> We may never know, so it is at best unfortunate to dogmatize and slander. Remove your posting, serve the truth. <<

Learn the difference between primary and secondary sources. Serve the truth by getting over your obvious pro-Columbus prejudice.

Rob Schmidt

*****

>> Where do I find the quoted statements of Columbus brother and Cuneo? <<

You tell me. Isn't the word of his son good enough? How many primary sources do you need before you'll acknowledge the evidence?

Ferdinand Columbus accompanied his father on his fourth voyage and was an eyewitness to events then and there. (He wasn't an eyewitness to the other voyages, so his summaries of Columbus's journals are mostly secondary sources.) Here are some quotes from his work:

According to Kirkpatrick Sale, who quotes Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and 'with God's aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.' "

Ferdinand Columbus described how it worked: "[The Indians] all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished."

All of these gruesome facts are available in primary source material—letters by Columbus and by other members of his expeditions—and in the work of Las Casas, the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them.

Whether Ferdinand witnessed these events or merely reported them, his views tally with those of Las Casas and other eyewitnesses. Moreover, Ferdinand was "partial" to his father—i.e., likely to shade any ambiguous facts in the admiral's favor. So the evidence against Columbus is as clear as 500-year-old events are going to get.

* More opinions *

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